The process for freight quoting and acceptance of freight quotes, is typically a manual process in which freight quotes are requested by a customer who telephones or emails a freight company for a quote. Then a freight quote is subsequently telephoned or emailed back by a person associated with the freight company. If there is direct telephonic communication, the customer may accept or decline the freight quote right then and there. However, many times there is a missed call or the freight quote was emailed to the customer. In these cases, the customer must later contact the freight company to either accept or decline the quoted price. Also, some customers may provisionally decline the currently offered quote, but ask for better pricing (e.g., a better quote). If the customer requests a new quote, the freight company may issue a new quote on better terms for the customer, if better terms are feasible by the freight company. If not, normally the freight company simply informs the customer that better terms cannot be offered, but that the customer may still be able to “Accept” or “Decline” the original quote. This is an existing process of quoting and re-quoting that is cumbersome, temporally disjoint, and often prone to error. The process is therefore problematic for freight companies that need to maintain existing business processes without using traditional delay-based email and/or phone quoting.
Therefore, what is needed is an automated process for allowing customers to inform a freight company whether or not they are satisfied with the quoted price from the freight company.